Don't go without me
by scarletsnapdragon
Summary: A series of unconnected ficlets/drabbles of various genres. Series title taken from the Civil Wars song, "C'est la mort." Next up: the world in stillness (hurt/comfort, psychological)
1. Not Fair

Genre: fluff

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><p>"So, uh. Thanks. For listening," Wally said, glancing furtively at his best friend out of the corner of his eye.<p>

There was a hole, edged in ragged black and precisely the size of the pad of his index finger, in the feet end of Dick's comforter. Wally knew because he'd put it there by worrying at the fabric so fast that it ignited a few minutes ago.

His friend smiled beside him. Wally could hear it. "Anytime, man. Whenever you need to talk, I'm all ears."

"I know. I bet Dumbo's jealous." Chuckling, he stood up. "It's late. I need to get back."

Dick stood too, and a familiar impish gleam lit his eyes. Wally groaned internally, steeling himself against The Flutter. God, that could be someone's supervillain name, and he'd fear it a lot less. He'd also savor it a lot less, so….

Impish gleam. Yeah. Not to be trifled with. "Don't bother texting next time. You know you're always welcome in my bed."

See, that? That wasn't fair. Dick said stuff like that to everyone, so how was Wally supposed to _know?_ He _thought_ he knew. He was ninety…eight percent sure. But what if he was wrong and he ruined everything?

But what if he was right and he was missing out on the best part of his life being even better?

Screw it. That's how you want to play it, Grayson? Fine. Wally's got a few tricks of his own.

The world slips into slow motion. Above them, the fan whirls to a standstill. Dick's lips are just beginning to pucker around a /g/ that will be followed by an /ʊ/ when Wally fits his own against them and sucks gently, once.

As he speeds away, he wonders if Dick will feel the smirk.

.

Dick was about to say goodnight, when suddenly Wally was gone. Except not totally. Dick was about ninety-nine point…eight seven three percent sure that Wally had left a kiss behind. Dick ran his tongue over his bottom lip. Oh, and a smirk.

He grinned. _Game on._

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thank you for reading!

Feedback, including concrit, would be much appreciated :-)


	2. Lost

Genre: angst

Warning(s): major character death mentioned, potentially sad

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><p>Wally puts on another burst of speed. He's going faster now than he ever has before and it's not enough. It never will be.<p>

Because it wasn't. He was too late. A nanosecond sooner and Rob wouldn't –

_My fault._

Wally pushes. Saltwater sprays up behind him as he passes the edge of the continent, directionless.

His north star is gone.

_"__Wally? Where are you?" _Pause._ "__Wally, please, _talk_to me"._

The panic in his uncle's voice adds another layer to the guilt threatening to drown him. Wally rips the communicator out of his ear. It drops, and he keeps running.

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thank you for reading!


	3. Wishing

Genre: angst

Warning(s): potentiality for sadness, major character death

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><p>The window's locked but that doesn't mean anything. It pops open just like it always has.<p>

Inside, there's clothes everywhere and the sheets are wrecked. Wally's a dynamic sleeper.

Was.

Dick stands in the middle of the dark room feeling none of the comfort he hoped to find here. A fool's hope, but now that it's gone he has nothing left.

Stifling a sob with one hand, he sits, burying the other in the sheets. Except it's a T-shirt, not a sheet. Dick holds it up. Curls around it in Wally's bed and breathes in the scent he left behind.

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thank you for reading!


	4. Love Without Wings

**AN:** I want to thank both **mistresskoriandr** and **invinciblepanties **on tumblr for their fantastic advice as betas! Really, this is a lot different than it was before they worked their magic :-)

I've tried to address their concerns while still retaining the quirks that I feel define my voice. (So any odd sentence structures or funny word choices are my own and probably deliberate…for better or worse.)

Summary: Dick needs something to lean on. Wally's his wall.

Genre: hurt/comfort (emotional)

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><p><em>"Friendship is love without his wings" ~Lord Byron<em>

.

It's not fair and Dick knows it, but he dials Wally's number anyway.

The line trills only once before his friend's voice takes over. There's a breathless levity to it, like he was about to laugh right before he pressed the talk button. Immediately the anxious knot inside Dick begins to ease.

"Hey, man, what's up?" Wally greets.

_I'm a selfish, needy asshole and I can't be alone with myself right now_, he doesn't say. Instead, "Can you come over?"

"Right now?" Wally asks. If he wasn't already concerned about Dick calling him in the middle of the night (when any self-respecting Bat ought to be out intimidating the crap out of every criminal within a 50-mile radius), he must be now.

"Yeah," Dick answers.

"Your place?"

"Yeah." He climbs out a window onto the fire escape to wait. Two minutes later an unseasonable breeze rustles his hair and he's no longer alone.

Wally looks him over once and his face tightens. He knows exactly what this is about.

Dick shifts his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. Guiltily. But damn it all, that knowledge, the years of _knowing_ that it comes from, are exactly why he picked up the phone in the first place. Sometimes you just need that one person.

"Conner?"

Dick looks away, down into the grimy alley below. "Yeah."

Wally waits.

"He broke up with M'gann. I thought…I mean, after – "

Prague.

Neither of them has to say it, but it's there, charging the air between them with a helpless kind of incomprehensibility.

_Undercover at a fancy boat party, light glinting off of champagne glasses, everyone just a little too caught up in the romance of the Heart of Europe…_

Dick shakes his head to clear it. "He's straight."

"Could've fooled me," Wally says harshly. His hands clench on the railing, and Dick's glad this conversation is happening here instead of near anything small and breakable.

Other than him, that is.

Unbidden, memory rises for the thousandth time. He might as well be there all over again, the railing digging into his back, the tips of Conner's fingers resting on his waist, and their breath mingling as they awkwardly tilt and re-tilt, trying to find complementary angles. Then they do, and the way the deck _lurches_ under his feet has nothing to do with the river.

He doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to sound that whiny and bitter and pathetic, but it comes out anyway. "He did fool me."

And that admission is like a hole in the roof, and he's leaking _feeling_ all over the place, and he hates it even though Wally's the only one there to see how wretched he really is.

"I thought that kiss meant something to him," he says. Cringes internally. Dick Grayson, superhero, former Batman protégé, and alleged prince of heartthrobs, reduced to a nervous wreck by a _kiss_. "I knew it didn't – _couldn't_ – mean as much to him as it did to me, but – it felt _real_."

"Real douche-y," Wally interjects.

"Thank you, peanut gallery," Dick counters and presses both palms to his temples briefly, eyes shut. "Anyway, I heard from Zee last night that he and M'gann split, and I couldn't stop wanting it to be because of Prague. So I asked him about it. I know, stupid."

"I was thinking more along the lines of masochistic."

He wants to laugh, like he usually does at one of Wally's painfully obvious comments. The most he can manage is a feeble quirk at the corner of his lips before he goes on. "That's when he told me he likes girls and that Prague was an accident and he was really sorry if I took it the wrong way."

For a moment Wally's temper all but crackles, and Dick wonders if the fire escape can survive a seriously pissed off speedster. Probably not.

Luckily for the fire escape, Wally settles for, "Fucking bastard. I'll kick his _'sorry'_ ass."

Dick tries to picture said ass-kicking. Instead pictures Wally flailing a foot off the ground while Conner holds him at arm's length by the scruff of his neck_._ Now he does laugh, full and deep. "I'd like to see that."

"Hey, I could do it. A joke, the Speed Force is not, my young friend."

Dick rolls his eyes. The knot is much smaller now. Releasing a long, quiet breath, he steps away from the railing and settles down on the stairs that lead up to the next floor. Wally sits below him on the landing, legs crossed.

"Forget Superdouche. You're too good for him anyway."

"Spoken like a true Nightwing fangirl."

"Hey, I'm the _original_ Nightwing fangirl."

They share a chuckle before falling into silence.

There's an uncertain, too-fragile look in Wally's eyes when he next opens his mouth. But there's also a terrified little speck of hope there, and Dick feels like the lowest piece of slime to ever sully the earth.

"Do you think you can finally let it go?" Wally asks.

"No," he says, because he can't foster that speck. If it were anyone else asking, he would have said, truthfully, 'not yet' or 'maybe I can start to.' But it's Wally, the one person he can't ever lose, especially not to the specter of his ridiculous, childish, unrequited first crush.

When he thinks about it, really thinks about it, it's maddening that it had to be Conner. Conner, with his perfect shoulders and his unflappable solidity and that damnable enigmatic allure. Instead of Wally, who undeniably, unequivocally cares about him and would know what something like Prague would mean to him.

But it wasn't Wally. Life is sucky and unobliging like that sometimes.

And now Wally's staring down into his lap, like he does when he's trying to hide the thoughts in those open book eyes of his.

Dick's suddenly very afraid.

Wally bites his lower lip, then casts his eyes up and to the side, as if seeking guidance.

In the next millisecond, Wally's wrapped around him squeezing the hurt out. "I'm about to say something that's going to sound extremely corny. If you laugh, I'll tell Alfred you're the one who broke that vase in the East Wing sun room last summer."

No laughing, huh? Dick readies a smirk.

Arming himself with a steadying breath, Wally plunges ahead. "You're amazing and hot and smart and heroic and brave and you mean more to me than air." He pauses to squeeze a little harder. "What I'm trying to say is, you're worthy of all the love in this world, and anyone who thinks otherwise, especially you, is a dumbass."

Unable to speak, Dick squeezes back.

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thank you for reading!

Feedback and criticism are dearly appreciated but completely optional :-)


	5. the world in stillness

Summary: Wally has a recurring nightmare.

Genre: hurt/comfort (psychological)

Warnings: potential sadness, nightmares, panic attacks

Title taken from 'Between Coming and Staying' by Octavio Paz

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><p>He's up and out of the bed before anything so trifling as rational thought can stop him.<p>

"Wally?" comes Dick's voice, distorted, half a second later. Wally's counted a thousand of his own frenetic heartbeats in that time.

Dick vaults out of bed to join him where he's backed up against the wall, but Wally's still terrified and shivering and the motion is so achingly _slow_.

Wally shakes harder, so hard his edges blur.

Instead of trying to talk him down and freaking him out even more, Dick presses their bodies close enough that he can feel the thrum of Wally's blood like it's his own. He breathes deep and deliberate and each breath says what he doesn't dare. _It's okay,_ _I'm here, it was the nightmare again, I can see you, I can hear you, breathe with me, follow me, _live_ with me, Wally, please, slow down_…

Wally sucks in quick, stabbing bursts of air, holds them and spits them back out. Each one is a knife twisting in Dick's gut. He _hates_ this. Hates not being able to keep it from happening, hates not being _enough_ to keep it from happening.

Viciously shoving down any desperate little noise of his own that might interfere with the rhythm he's set for Wally, Dick wraps one trembling hand around his, the other drawing firm, soothing loops into the contours of his skull. In the streetlight-orange glow falling through the blinds, Wally's hair is silk spun from the sun's fire. Dick focuses on that fire, on Wally's fire, and takes another breath.

Seconds slip by like leaves in a strong current. Finally, Wally's able to match every tenth heartbeat to one of Dick's.

Dick tucks his chin into the bend in his neck. They keep on breathing together.

"It'sgettingworse. I – It. Takeslongertocomedown. Everytime," and, _God_, he's still talking so _fast_.

Dick's grip tightens and for a second that's way too long he starts to spiral into the panic consuming his boyfriend. But he can't. Hands still locked together, Dick leads them out of the bedroom without a word, only pausing to grab their helmets and a couple of suitable jackets.

Wally doesn't remind him about work in a few short hours or how 'fast' on a motorcycle isn't anything at all like _fast_. Which is the point.

Outside, the motorcycle growls and Wally molds his body to Dick's.

.

They take Highway 46 out of the city, over the causeway and into the mainland, so far in that Bludhaven's lights, already inexplicably sub-real up close, fade to the afterimage of a camera flash behind them. They go south where the highway forks. The north fork goes to Gotham.

By the time they pull off the road to watch the sun rise over the birch trees that grow thick throughout the state, Wally's settled back into the right…frequency? resonance? rhythm? At any rate, the chatter of birds is no longer a hellish chorus of shadow-dwelling nightmare creatures and his heart doesn't feel like it's about to explode.

He still hasn't let go of Dick's hand.

They sit on the ground a little ways into the trees, quiet, as shafts of sunlight start to burn their way through the canopy. It isn't until the morning commuters are more of a flood than a trickle that Wally speaks.

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault."

"Not your problem."

Dick shakes his head and raises Wally's hand, trying to put all the comfort, all the 'this is what I'm here for, you moron' he can into the gentle press of his lips against the knuckles. Wally twists his hand out of Dick's so he can wind it into his hair and pull his face close. Like everything else about them, their lips fit together automatically.

And he's spinning, lost in a whirlwind that's part Wally and part him and all glory and terror. Sometimes, it's too much.

With a gasp that borders on a sob, Dick pulls away. Detaches. "We have to do something about the nightmare. Watching you go through this, every night – it's killing us both."

"I know. I _know_ it is. But. What do you want me to do? I can't just turn it off," and if the words come out a little harsher than they need to be…Dick had expected that and Wally hadn't meant for them to.

"You need to talk to someone."

Wally's temper flares in earnest. "My uncle's d – "

"I mean a therapist. Bruce can find someone. Discreet."

"But you haven't talked to him since – "

"Doesn't matter."

Wally looks away, jaw set. Dick reaches for his hand again, half expecting him to shake it off. He doesn't.

"Okay."

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thank you for reading!


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